gunnarthor

I think this is an example of police misconduct that should be part of a larger conversation. https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/07/us/oklahoma-city-police-shooting-teen/index.html Five black kids were playing with bb guns in an abandoned home, much like I would have done 30 years ago. Police are called. Officer is heard before firing on the kids that he thinks they are playing with cap gun. Officer sees kid leaving abandoned house, thinks he sees the kid holding a gun, tells him to drop it and shoots his gun six times, hitting the boy twice. A police investigation clears the cop and the union supports this. It is not an act of police misconduct. But is this what we want as a society? Cops getting protection and permission to shooting wildly* at children playing with toys?** Fortunately, this boy lived. Others, such as Tamir Rice, haven't been so lucky. The officer in both those cases never gave the child time to comply with their orders (that can also be seen in the video I posted of an officer beating a motorist in Minnesota). Officers get away with this by saying some version of "I thought he pointed a gun at me/someone else, I only had a split second to react." (Although there are a number of ugly cases where cops were let off the hook when a black man simply held a gun). The training these officers got were very likely the same or similar to the Bulletproof Warrior/Killology type of training that Jeronimo Yanez got before he murdered Philando Castile. Perhaps a stronger look at how our officers are trained is needed. * The officer was in a city and four of his shots missed completely. Case law forgives police who shoot, miss and hit innocent bystanders. ** if the answer to this is yes, shouldn't we ban toy guns?

I think this is fair. I'm willing to trade Graterol in a win-now trade partly b/c I think Balazovic will be a darn good starter in his own right and with the 13th pick, we could nab a fast moving college arm. But with Odorizzi, Pineda and Gibson as free agents at the end of the year and a lot of question marks about the AAA arms we have, moving Graterol for only 1.5 years of starting pitching might haunt us.

I think a package around Graterol and Larnich/Rooker + some lesser pieces could do it. Toronto has a superstar-in-the-making in Vlad. Graterol would be an obvious add to a solid rotation. Larnich, while further away, could man a corner or Rooker could replace Smoak sooner. Throw ins like Wade or Raley might be useful to Toronto while they try to get some offense out of the corner OF positions.

I thought that the fight with the Night's King would take several episodes. That we'd see a huge battle outside Winterfell that the bad guys dominate and then the heroes would be forced to defend a castle that's literally called "winter fell". We'd have an episode where Jon and/or Dany does something extremely reckless, maybe retrieving an artifact from beyond the wall (Horn of Winter?) that would help the good guys. And then a third episode where the bad guys finally storm the walls while Jon/Dany race home to save the day. After the Others are done, they'd deal with the Golden Company and Cercei fairly easily. But, nope.

Right now, CJ Cron is posting a 81 OPS+. He's not getting it done. His defense is good but he's not going to stop the Twins from bringing up an uber-prospect, much like Dougie Baseball didn't stop us from bringing up Morneau.

Currently, the Twins minor leagues have given us a few pleasant surprises (Balozavic, Rortvedt, Jeffers, Arreaz) but a lot of injuries (Javier, Kiriloff, Gordon, Gonsalves, Severino) and some rough starts (Larnich .682 OPS in, Rooker .269 OBP, Thorpe 8.19 era, Enlow 6.94 era, Baddoo .198 avg, Celestino .458 OPS) among our top 20 prospects. I'm still a believer in most of our struggling guys but Enlow is a head scratcher. He's never looked good. I think Kiriloff is going to be a Mauer-like bat for us for a decade. Maybe a few more homers but huge avg/obp guy. Really nice to see him hitting and taking walks in AA.

I'd disagree with that sentiment. Aegon VI was referenced in earlier books as the Mummer's Dragon and the Blackfyre rebellion (and Bittersteel/Blood Raven) has been mentioned prominently. While Dany will probably be weakened fighting Aegon (or deal with her evil breakdown, depending on what internet theory you trust), it's at least been established. In the show, nearly all the set pieces have been made and the script needs to fit it. So somehow a fleet with magical crossbows not only spies the good guys but also gets perfect shots (except when aiming at Dany). Dany, with small dragons, could destroy several armies and sacked three cities. But on a large dragon against 11 ships, she retreats and lets her fleet get destroyed. The King's landing stuff is worse - a few seasons ago we see Cercei is hated/mistrusted by everyone. She destroys half the city, including the main religious site. We saw the city revolt against much stronger Joffrey (including several riots and general sense of mistrust) and now the city runs to Cercei so she has de facto hostages. The throne was bankrupt so - viola - they get enough money from sacking Highgarden to hire mercenaries and, apparently, built hundreds of said magical crossbows. The show is still entertaining but it's not good by any stretch. It reminds me of the bad plotting in the Star Wars prequels but, again, more entertaining.

To understand police misconduct, you'd want to educate the public on both what you mean by police misconduct (do we mean only excessive force? does it include filing false police reports? Over policing minority neighborhoods? Not investigating crimes against certain groups?) and then you'd want to measure the scope of the problem. How often does it happen? Why? Is it a failure of training? Is it a failure of policy? There are ways to do both (define and measure) with or without naming individual officers. But generally, oversight without transparency fails. And in my profession, it's generally agreed that police oversight is extremely lacking. The USA Today article I linked is a decent starting point to see examples of police misconduct but shouldn't be assumed to be a comprehensive list.

This cuts both ways. Going into 2017, guys like Jeren Kendell and Alex Fraedo were in contention to be the #1 pick.

I don't think this person liked the show - https://turtle-paced.tumblr.com/post/184686676587/thoughts-on-804

Royce Lewis is starting to heat up a bit as well - he's had five 2 hit games in his last 8 games. Balazovic is going to skyrocket up these lists. I think he's already our second best pitching prospect. That 2016 draft is going to be amazing for us.

The dragon was killed because the show needed to make things harder for the good guys. Cercei is able to arm King's Landing to the teeth b/c that's another obstacle for Jon/Dany to overcome. None of it makes sense anymore. I've gotten to the point where I just ignore the stupid actions of the characters/plot, the show runners simply lost control of this ship. Just enjoy watching the battle scenes. I don't think I'm invested in any character anymore.

I still want the Twins to go after Dylan Bundy. He's horrible in Baltimore but he's in Baltimore. I think with a change of scenery, he could be good.

Hoping NEWR has a nice run, as well. Additionally, while I don't own Adobe but my kids do and that's been on a nice run.

Gore was the obvious choice in 2000. He was the VP to a very popular president. One of the big mistakes in 2000 and 2016, I think, is that both Gore and HRC failed to use Bill Clinton enough on the campaign trail. For very different reasons, both didn't use him nearly as much as they should have. I can't remember who I supported in the 2004 primaries but I know I helped register voters for Kerry at some point. Did Edwards through his hat in the ring in 04? A big idea in 04 was that the Dems had to nominate someone with a military background b/c of the Iraq war. I think there was a plan to nominate a former general even though he was probably a republican on most issues. Kerry was a rough candidate but he also got blindsided by the Swift Boat ads, which, frankly, turned the election. And the GOP has certainly nominated some pretty boring candidates themselves - Romney, Bush etc.

mlbpipeline updated their draft list. Twins draft 13, 39, 54 and 90. https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-pipeline-s-2019-top-100-draft-prospects?t=mlb-pipeline-coverage The draft is good for position players but a bit ... blah on arms. ""This is the worst group of college arms I've seen in the first round in my 30 years of scouting," a NL front-office executive said. "It's so weak.""

mlbpipeline likes him well enough and Atlanta just promoted him to AA. He's certainly not a lock to make it to the majors and he might end up as a bullpen arm.

Graterol and Balazovic are really exciting prospects. Jax pitching a lot better than I thought he could. I remember thinking he wouldn't be top 30 in our system last year. He's really stepped up now that he's pitching full time.

I'm not very impressed with the pitchers in our top 20, outside of Graterol. Nice to see Smeltzer pitch well but his upside is limited. The FO made a lot of trades at the deadline the last two years but I'm not sure the returns are all that inspiring. Certainly too early to make a final decision but, ugh. I'd much rather have Ynoa back than Littell. Nice to have Gordon and Kiriloff back and good to see Sano is moving. Seems like Lewis is getting hot, too.

Not even sure which of the three politics thread to put this but it sounds like Mueller is angry at Barr for how he rolled out the special counsel's report. "The summary letter the Department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24 did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this office’s work and conclusions,” Mueller wrote. “There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation. This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations." https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/mueller-complained-that-barrs-letter-did-not-capture-context-of-trump-probe/2019/04/30/d3c8fdb6-6b7b-11e9-a66d-a82d3f3d96d5_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.06d43caa804e That's going to keep Trump's role in obstructing justice and taking aid from Russia in the spotlight even longer. Today's hearings are going to be a doozy.

Seriously, Mike, thanks for the Shopify suggestion. That is a fun stock.

We've already showed that you don't understand the context of the links you share.

Yep, he also gets under Donny's skin, which is nice. Trump's path to re-election requires a lot of favorable things happening. His +/- in Michigan, for example, is -11 right now. -12 in WI. His numbers with independents and democrats are in the toilet and, while his numbers among republicans are always strong, the number of people claiming to be republican have shrunk. The Dems got a huge blue wave in 2018 which indicated that voters in WI, MI and PA were ready to vote Dem over GOP.

https://www.mlb.com/news/replacing-vlad-jr-as-mlb-s-top-prospect?t=mlb-pipeline-coverage

Way too soon